The Facebook platform is pretty frigging smart. Actually, the notion of creating an open environment in order to extend and accommodate to your user’s world is fairly obvious, but kudos to them for pushing through with it. It seems like as soon as sites get successful, they get greedy and build walled gardens to prevent users from escaping. Well, at least Facebook realizes that they are not the center of their users’ world. It’d really only take one misstep (though it’d have to be a huge misstep), for their users to ditch FB and head off to another network. But the value add provided by the FB platform gives more reason for people to stick around. It also dilutes the impact of a misstep (although it’ll end up diluting the fervor of the diehards, but alas that’s the price of success and getting big).I’d still like to see FB open up more and adopt Open ID and making it easier to interface with FB outside of facebook.com, but this is a good first step.Now when I say Facebook, the new Google, I’m referring to the platform environment, the dangers of the open API. This is somewhat of a trojan horse godsend for a lot of these smaller SNSes like Pickspal or Flixter, because in a snap of a finger, suddenly the big, hairy issue of reaching network effects has been seemingly solved. From a traffic and user engagement standpoint, it’s great. I would guess that the business goal for most of these guys is to get exposure and try to bring back traffic back onto its main site. Theoretically this would also enable them to focus on site features that are more contextual to the behavior and purpose of the site and offload the broader social networking basics to FB.In the short to medium term, I think this is fine. But eventually there’s going to be conflicts of interests for some of these guys (I’m going to call them mini-SNSes to try to avoid ambiguous pronouns). A lot of the mini-SNS’ brand engagement is going to happen on FB, so it’s going to dilute the mini-SNS’ brand image and user loyalty. Getting on the FB platform may help these mini-SNSes get a million users quicker, but it’s not going to make it any easier to keep those million users loyal.I’m also curious about how it impacts the profit model. All everyone has at this point is just advertising. And I have a thought or two about that in general that I’ve been meaning to share, but that’s neither here nor there. But if 95% of a mini-SNS’ user engagement happens on FB, that might help the mini-SNS’ user and engagement numbers, but it’s not going to bring revenue in. And FB isn’t going to allow these mini-SNSes to reap advertising dollars on FB either. But I’ve only thought about it for about 5 minutes, so who knows. I would guess (or more likely hope) these guys have a much better plan moving forward.My last point is really the whole reason for why I wrote this post. I guess I could’ve been more brief, but whatever. Google rolled out features to Google Maps earlier this year that killed off about 600 little Google-Map API based startups. This is the danger of relying completely on another’s API. If the sugar mama decides to cut you off, you get screwed. And if the sugar mama decides to move into your space, you get killed. The platform is great for the users, all the buzz is well-deserved (even though it’s not like they cured cancer, it’s just an obviously solid business decision. This is the problem when everyone keeps making stupid decisions, it makes the good decisions seem like mind-blowing, world-changing decisions.), and for FB, this is going to catapult their growth even moreso. But I can’t help but think that a year from now, we’ll be seeing a Google Maps redux.
I’ve noticed there’s a direct inverse relationship between my blogging and living. The more living, the less blogging and vice versa. I’d like to separate these curves in the near future.
…too much cash, no $@#!ing clue.What could you do with the $1-1.6 billion they have earmarked for Facebook or Bebo or the next hot SNS?Steps 1-5:Fix Yahoo! 360 so it doesn’t suck (or just start over): $25 million (I’m being very generous with figures here)Pay the top 100,000 MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/etc. users $1,000 each to hang on the new and improved Yahoo! 360. (total: $100 million)Pay each of those users $10 for each new friend they bring over, up to 90 million friends: $900 million.Massive marketing/PR for general promotion and to handle all the bribery bad press: $200 millionCharitable donations, just for the heck of it: $375 millionStep 6: ???Step 7: ProfitGrand total spent: $1.6 billion, give or take several hundred million dollars on tactical variations.
Why does MySpace.com now require horizontal scrolling? Did they start designing their pages for 1280px widths? As you can see below, a good 70% of what I can see is either ad or useless space. Until I get a widescreen LCD, I’m on 1024×768 like most Internet users. This is probably just a temporary goof up, but it’s indicative of MS’ general sloppiness.
Also, MySpace released a new profile editor feature which is swell. But it boggles my mind that they wouldn’t have put any effort into creating a nice design in the before and after scenarios, see below:
What the heck is up with the retro blue look? And tiled picture wallpaper went out with flying toasters and windows 3.1. WTF! Couldn’t they even have tried to appear like they gave a crap? So this is what profiles are supposed to aspire to look like?Just sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Clearly more work went into the Die Hard promotional elements than anything on the site. Regardless of MS’ growth stats, I’m convinced that MS is primed for the taking. And not even by facebook, but by some other “up and comer.”
I like Guy Kawasaki. I’ve read some of his books. Generally, I think they’re well written and helpful. However when I heard the rumors for Truemors (haha, get it?), I wasn’t sold on the idea. I didn’t see a clear purpose for it. Now that I’ve seen it in live, I still don’t know what it’s for. Originally, I thought it was going to be solely entertainment news focused. And while entertainment represents a fairly large chunk of activity, it’s not the focus. Actually, there’s just a general lack of focus. Already, there’s a fair amount of spam, or what I’d consider spam, on it. Unless they get a quick hold on it, I can see it devolving into a mess. I get a feeling that uncov, my new favorite blog is going to have a field day with it.
On the heels of the news that the DoD is blocking access to a variety of social networks and ugc media sites, I’d just like to bring up a point of surprise that the dod hasn’t already created its own social network. I’ve felt that the military is a social context in which a self-sustaining sns would work, sort of like facebook. I’m sure there’s some difference in that soldiers probably have more of a desire to connect outside of their walls versus college students, but there’s still value in keeping in touch with each other as they’re shuffled to various parts of the world and when they eventually leave the military. There’s plenty of commerce opportunities too, from classifieds to networking. Plus, as the owners, the DoD would, obviously, have more control over what happens. There’s an issue of openness and user privacy that needs to be addressed. But I think they’re surmountable issues.Now all they’ve done is ensure that some second rate SNS or ugc media site is gonna clean up.
Couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that with the increasing momentum around online profile management, that there’s probably some geek trend where people are naming their babies odd names to get a sweet search engine ranking. And then a few days ago, I came across a WSJ article that outlined just that. I should’ve called this earlier. Then I could’ve made claim to being prescient.Now, I understand why you wouldn’t want to me named Mike Smith or Jane Williams. But I’ll feel sorry for the kids that grow up with names like Jubajube or Hoobastank.Luckily for me, Brian Sim isn’t a super popular name. And it didn’t take much to take that #1 spot. But kudos, to the other Brian Sim, who without fail, kept taking the #1 spot every time I nuked this blog.
If someone were to ask me about an example of wasted time and effort, I’d point to Yahoo’s partnership with Gracenote. A centralized, official database of lyrics is a solid idea. The implementation of tying into their search results is a fine, obvious idea.However, Techcrunch notes that, “copyright restrictions force them to show lyrics as an image instead of free text, to avoid scraping.” It’s inane restrictions like this that give piracy a capitalistic, if not moral, platform to flourish. So I can either go the legal route and use an end product which is almost completely inferior to the illegal route of finding lyrics on one of a million fan sites. My question as a consumer in a capitalistic society, is why? What’s my motivation?
I’d lie if I said the thought of this didn’t cross my mind at least once over the past couple weeks. But ultimately there’s really no value. Niches’ core values comes from its distinctiveness and identifiability, e.g., I am a college student, I am a professional, I am a dog lover, I am a biker, etc. and we all have different needs.On the flip side, if being laid off defines you as a person to some degree, I’d suggest a shrink, not an SNS. Plus, layoffs don’t last forever, and if it did, I certainly wouldn’t be tooling around with SNSes the rest of my life. With that said, the thought behind it is appreciable I guess. But it’d serve better as a group within a more broadly defined job SNS like LinkedIn (if LinkedIn had groups that is).Now if the economy tanks in a hurry, and we hit a new depression… well the whole depression thing would suck, but I still don’t think the site would fly. But what the heck, the cost of entry is cheap.
If there’s anything that the recent furors regarding MySpace’s snafu and the Digg implosion has impressed upon me, is that conspiracy theories and entitlement syndromes, previously reserved mainly for political viewpoints has become just as prevalent in commerce.Power to the people. And the people are pissed. Sometimes irrationally so. And more and more, there are clear lines of distinction and tremendous vitriol that devolves into mob behavior. For every one rational point is a hundred rabblerousers.It’s nothing new of course. But now the discourse spreads quicker than ever before due to the nature of social media and our perpetual connectedness. It doesn’t take much to create social proof. All it takes is one well connected irate twitterer, competitive spirits rise, and suddenly it’s an unstoppable powderkeg with every major blog reporting and adding their slant. The mob becomes louder, angrier and bigger. Next thing you know, if you’re the target of the mob’s furor, you’re f’d in the a.So “transparency” is the new buzzword. But it’s an important theme. Technological innovations have made consumer data more available than ever. To both marketers and identity thieves. Marketing efforts can be targeted to degrees never before dreamed about. But similarly, corporate data is now more available than ever too. And because the communication dynamic has become flattened, any skeleton in the closet can and will be exposed. So the power’s to the people in ways like never before. Google owns me. But I can pwn Google.So this brings me back to my original point. The nature of the company-consumer relationships have changed. No own really owned anyone previously. Or at least consumers didn’t know or think about it. Now everyone owns everyone. And everyone knows it. And thus, everyone has a sense of entitlement. Consequently, all the vertical relationships become increasingly adversarial. Because the lines of entitlement are always clearer in a vertical relationship versus a horizontal relationship.And in the end, it’s the consumers who always win, because companies need consumers more than the reverse (the beauty of competition).
